I’m Interested in Adopting; Where Should I Start?

Over the years since we started pursuing adoption, we’ve gotten increasingly more questions about our journey, our family, and adoption in general. Frequently those questions are from people who are interested in considering pursuing adoption themselves, and they’d like to know where to start.

There are so many different avenues – adoption (or purely fostering) through the foster care system, domestic private adoption, and international adoption. And within each of those systems, there are countless other decisions to be made. If adopting internationally, from which country to pursue adopting? If domestic or internationally, which agency to use? Regardless of which path is chosen, to what age range and gender to be open? And to what special needs to be open? It can be overwhelming even to know where to start.

My initial suggestions may seem indirect, but for several reasons I think they truly are the best place to start. There are two places I’d recommend that anyone considering adoption start:

(1) First, research adoption parenting. All adoption is borne out of trauma and loss. For that reason, it is absolutely essential that children who join their families via adoption be parented in light of that reality. Of the whole wide range of parenting strategies that may work well for neurotypical children, only a subset consistently works well for children who have joined their families through adoption. The first book I’d recommend reading would be The Connected Child by Karyn Purvis and David Cross. It is the go-to book for understanding how to parent children who have lived through trauma. To be blunt, if you are unwilling move toward parenting in the way the book describes, adoption is not for you, because that is what adopted children need from their adoptive parents. If you are willing to continue to learn more about connected parenting and do your best to parent in whatever way is best for your adopted children, regardless of how different that might be from what your upbringing was or what your instincts might be, then you’ll be in a good place to start pursuing adoption.

(2) Research adoption ethics. Not all adoption programs are created equal. There is fraud. There is trafficking. A “demand” (for instance, for young girls with no special needs, who are, ideally, white) can lead to motivation to “create” a supply. I often recommend that people start out with a series of Jen Hatmaker’s blog posts to begin to learn about ethics in adoption: Adoption Ethics Part One, Part Two, and Part Three. It’s best to research ethics at the beginning. Learn what the red flags are, learn what the potential issues are with any programs you may be considering, learn more about what questions to ask. It’s so important to do this before you have an idea in your head of what your future family is going to look like and most definitely before you have an adorable photo of an absolutely precious child, whom you want to scoop up into your arms and bring home forever. We as adoptive parents are responsible for encouraging ethical behavior by all the actors in the adoption world, and to do that, we have to understand what is happening in the adoption world.

Only after you have done some research into parenting children who join their families through adoption and into adoption ethics would I recommend that you start researching adoption programs.

Some of the best general resources can be found at Rainbow Kids and Creating a Family. In particular, this chart at Creating a Family may be helpful in comparing different types of adoption. Once you start making some choices about the specific roads you want to walk in your adoption journey, there are many more resources out there, but for broadly applicable, initial information, those are two good websites with which to start! Please also feel free to reach out to me, and I’m happy to talk more any time 🙂

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Meet Alison

I'm Alison, wife to one great guy and mama to four precious kiddos. My days are spent loving and caring for those 5 and anyone else God brings into my path, and as I read books and explain math, wipe noses and change diapers, teach and pray, correct and celebrate, I also contemplate and share my thoughts in this space. I'm so honored that you're here!